For Panamanians, the Canal Is Theirs. But Who Profits From It?

Decades after the United States invaded Panama in 1989, Samuel Castañeda says the sounds and smells of that night – armored tanks rumbling, houses burning, and bullets flying around his neighborhood – still loom large in his memory.

Today, a new kind of offensive is on Panamanian minds, as U.S. President Donald Trump repeatedly threatens to wrest control of the Panama Canal back into American hands. His claims are bringing to the surface decades-old emotions about U.S. imperialism and foreign occupation.

But in a country beset by wide economic inequalities, many Panamanians are questioning what citizens have gained from managing the iconic trade route themselves.[...]

In 1964, Panamanian high school students walked into the U.S.-run zone and tried to raise a Panamanian flag alongside the U.S. Stars and Stripes. They were met by thousands of U.S. protesters, and a symbolic call for sovereignty turned into a bloody clash, sparking yearslong discussions about how Panama could take over the canal. U.S. control over the canal “really was a [thorn] in U.S. relations ... with Latin America” at the time, says Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Americas Society/Council of the Americas in Washington. The dust had barely settled on the Cuban Revolution, and the idea that “Latin America was finding its voice to expel the imperialists became a very symbolic issue.”

The treaties that U.S. President Jimmy Carter signed with Panamanian leader Omar Torrijos in 1977, handing the canal over to Panama in 1999, guaranteed the canal’s neutrality as an international passage. That means that any ship, regardless of its country of origin, can use the canal.

Handing ownership of the canal to Panama ensured that the U.S. would be able to use the waterway while avoiding what appeared to be growing risks of nationalist attacks, Mr. Farnsworth says...

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